Yeofolk
A Yeofolk is a beast of burden that appear in Might and Magic: The Dreamwright and Might and Magic: The Shadowsmith. Yeofolk are looming, shambling behemoths that make clanking sounds when they move. When night comes, they burrow into the ground to make sleep holes. Their handlers use buzzing, whiplike poles to urge the creatures when necessary. Yeofolk have no fixed gender, and all of them can become pregnant when they are stung by an astilfe. This will cause lumps to swell up in the yeofolk's back parts, with the children growing inside. Yeofolk children are called imps, and as they require a tremendous amount of heat to be born, they are usually spawned at imperies. At the impery, the yeofolk is buried in a warm breeding pit, and the imps burst from the nodes.They eat their way through the mother's flesh, devour their less developed siblings, and dig their way up through the soil. Yeofolk have large litters, but relatively few of them survive to see the surface - one birth had a litter of eighteen viable nodes, resulting in twelve fully formed imps, with five or six of them surviving. When the kings of The Wheel requested an audience with the Dreamwright, one of Amonwelle's demands was 14 yeofolk "with adequate provision". The creatures were sent with Diligence's caravan, and Grapple and another yeofolk handler were responsible for them. When one of their yeofolk was stung by an astilfe, the caravan headed for Old Hopshog, where they traded the pregnant creature for two fully formed adults, plus some extra supplies. When the caravan was ambushed some time after leaving Paddifraw's Repose, the humans had to flee or die, and the yeofolk lumbered off on their own. More than animals While exploring Old Hopshog, Diligence found a tunnel leading underground, and eventually located an ancient room with an electronic plaque on the wall. She hid when a strange creature in a purple-black cape entered the chamber. It was about as large as the yeofolk, and moved with the same strange gait, but had an unmistakeable aura of intelligence. It started pressing buttons on the plaque, and when a wide doorway opened in the wall, it snatched up an imp from a breeding pit before skulking away. Later, Hitch's group ended up in Tustable, an impery that had been overrun by a coalition of rockrasps and little winding men. In the ruins beneath it, they were suddenly attacked by a collection of yeofolk, spitting pellets of venom at them. Hitch realized that they were led by smaller creatures in dark purple cloaks, similar to the being Diligence had seen beneath Old Hopshog. When Dubiel took command of Jassad Attqua's mind after the scholar retrieved his golden ship from the lake, he said he would tear down the Unseen Wall, kill the last of the candlemen and "rout the yeofolk from their nests" - listing the beasts among his most important enemies. All this suggested that the yeofolk were more than simple-minded herd animals. According to the author, this would have been developed in the third, unfinished novel. Category:Dreamwright & Shadowsmith creatures